


Start at the Beginning

by Kila9Nishika



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 08:19:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1851049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kila9Nishika/pseuds/Kila9Nishika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Start at the beginning.<br/>But which beginning?<br/>Time is a confusing spiraling sphere of reality - but in the end, it's always a story of Bad Wolf and the Oncoming Storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Start at the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shizukana_Yami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shizukana_Yami/gifts).



> This is not my usual style of writing, but...it sort-of wrote itself.  
> So this is a REALLY early birthday present for Shizukana_Yami. Happy REALLY EARLY birthday!

_Start at the beginning._

She doesn't dare tell him her name, doesn't dare look at him for too long for fear of what words might spill from her unlocked lips (he is so young, so _young_ ,) so she averts her face and says nothing and walks in the other direction when it looks like he might have seen her.

("Koschei, have you seen that lady before?"

"Yeah, I think she's one of the scientists who stabilize the Vortex around Gallifrey."

"Why'd she come to our graduation ceremony, then?")

_Start at the beginning._

They find her sprawled in the Prydonian Mountains, two children barely in school, and when she bursts into golden flames they call for help. (They might be both Time Lords in training, but they've never seen a regeneration before.) She is rushed to a hospital, and spends years unconscious. When she wakes, the Council and the President spend enormous amounts of time with her, and she insists that the boys never know that she survived the unsupervised regeneration.

("Still seems remarkably risky, if you ask me. Regenerating out of desperation, instead of age! We aren't primitive anymore."

"More curious is that she saved the child. When is the last time a Gallifreyan was _born_ , in any case?")

_Start at the beginning._

She tells him she's pregnant, finally finally and presses her hands to his chest while his heart (heart, heart, never again _hearts_ ) pumps crimson scarlet redredred all over her hands.

("You can't do this to me!"

"I'm so sorry."

"You stupid stupid...so very much him. And yet not enough him.")

_Start at the beginning._

She screams in anger when she realizes what he's done - again - but her tears aren't as bitter because he isn't all the way gone and he left her a part of himself to love and care for.

("He needs you. That's very me."

"Born in battle.  Full of blood and anger and revenge. Remind you of someone?")

_Start at the beginning._

She jumps and jumps and _jumps_ , a thunderclap heralding every jump. She has to find him, no matter how long it takes, because the stars are going out and the only person who can save them all is him, and the only way to get to him is through Donna ( _Donna Donna DoctorDonna_ someone howls into the Vortex). She keeps on and keeps on, returning to the same moments again and again, even as this reality scrapes at her skin and something keens in her mind and with all the returning to the same spot in time and space, she resolutely does not think about how long she's been doing this (and how deliberately she is misleading everyone into thinking that their few weeks have been her few weeks instead of her months years decades).

("Tell him."

"Who are you?"

"Tell him, Bad Wolf.")

_Start at the beginning._

She stares at the same wall for weeks on end, weeks and months and barely notices the people go by but she feels the time - the painful, oh so linear time that stretches by endlessly without him. 

But she has been living to run, these past days weeks months years, (or is it running to live?) so she can't vegetate in front of a wall endlessly no matter how much her heart hurts and the out-of-doors reminds her of that dreadful beach. ("If it's my last chance to say it -") So she starts learning and working and studying and what happened to that high school dropout because suddenly temporal physics seems so obvious.

("You tell her."

"No, you tell her."

"The Dimension Cannon started working.")

_Start at the beginning._

She's running, fighting, laughing, _living_ , because she's never been so alive as she is now, falling asleep in bowls on popcorn while she watches Disney movies after a day of running from monsters. He sits with her and runs with her and lives with her and if he sometimes looks saddened when she brings up the past, well, he obviously misses Jack as much as she does. (It has nothing to do with the Daleks, dying, or that Bad Wolf thing he never explained.) So they run and live and laugh and are so very very _alive_ and if only this could last forever - 

("My mum called, she wants us t' visit."

"One trip to twenty-first century London, coming right up!"

"Just avoid the Slitheen this time, okay?"

"Oi!")

_Start at the beginning._

("I AM BAD WOLF.")

_Start at the beginning._

Everyone is dead dead dead gone dead and it's his fault but she doesn't care this strange pink and yellow human who isn't afraid of monsters, just losing him. She just smiles and pokes out her tongue because they've just met an eternity ago and it feels like yesterday (it _was_ yesterday) and he was late by twelve months instead of hours but she just laughs like she does in the face of death and monsters and she's seething he thought he'd lost.

("I'm gonna die in a dungeon.  In Cardiff!"

"We’ll go down fightin’, yeah?  Together.")

_Start at the beginning._

It's war and fire and hate and she goes to the Council and tells them it's wrong but they don't care and she tries again and again until she finally decides to stop it herself, before he does it. (She should have realized that Time changes for no one, not even her favored child.)  They lock her away in a box and tell her not to interfere so she just waits and thinks and plots and plans.

("It is treason to go against the President. This war is the destiny of the universe."

"This war is _wrong_. It's destroying the universe."

"We will stop you from interfering. We _have_ stopped you from interfering."

"No one can stop the Big Bad Wolf.")

_Start at the beginning._

They give him her child. They tell him that the child is his granddaughter - well, no other way to explain the genetic code of two Time Lords and two humans in one tiny body. He is confused - he has never submitted his genes to the Looms - but Arkytior is all alone because they fear her influence on her own child. (She is a mystery and an anomaly, and the orderly Time Lords like neither.) So he takes in Arkytior, and he becomes Grandfather, and he realizes that he is not the only one restrained unfairly and cruelly by the customs of Gallifrey. She watches, watches but never follows, as he plans and cares and loves and takes her daughter and flees Gallifrey.

("Don’t steal that one, steal this one.  The navigation system’s knackered, but you’ll have much more fun."

"Excuse me?"

"Run, you clever boy, and remember me.")

_Start at the beginning._

She doesn't dare tell him her name, doesn't dare look at him for too long for fear of what words might spill from her unlocked lips (he is so young, so _young_ ,) so she averts her face and says nothing and walks in the other direction when it looks like he might have seen her.

("Koschei, have you seen that lady before?"

"Yeah, I think she's one of the scientists who stabilize the Vortex around Gallifrey."

"Why'd she come to our graduation ceremony, then?")

_Start at the beginning._

But which beginning?

 

If you start at the end, then at least you know that the two suns and Gallifrey are swallowed away into a pocket reality, but she isn't there because he set her free without knowing who he was setting free when he opened the box.

If you start at the end, then you know that she searches and searches and never finds him, but she finds a planet called Christmas and a field called Trenzalore and a place where all of Time is twisted and tangled.

If you start at the end, then you know that she is there to hear the Time Lords ask –

(“Doctor Who?”)

If you start at the end, then you know that she finds the home of a girl named Clara, and that he tumbles in the door still seasick and breathing gold and that he gasps and tells Clara that he must be hallucinating.

("Must be contagious, then."

"Don't be ridiculous, regeneration isn't contagious."

"No, the hallucinations.")

If you start anywhere, then you know that this is how it is:

The Oncoming Storm and the Bad Wolf, spiraling through Time.

Hope, dawning, cresting, breaking like a tsunami.

("Rose.  Are you really - Rose."

"Hello, Doctor.")


End file.
